America Ferrera doesn't look back at her big 2007 Emmy win with fond memories.
America Ferrera doesn't look back at her big 2007 Emmy win with fond memories.
The 36-year-old actress appeared on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert podcast on Monday, and talked about winning the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in her ABC hit, Ugly Betty. Ferrera said that during what should have been a happy moment, she was plagued with self-doubt.
"When I won the Emmy, I can't bring myself to go back and watch that because the only thing I remember about being on that stage, accepting that Emmy, was the feeling that no one in the room thought I deserved it," she recalled. "And that's a shame."
"'She doesn’t really deserve that,'" Ferrera continued about how she felt her peers were looking at her. "'What is she really doing in that role? That role is not interesting enough, it's not dark enough, it's not edgy enough.' Like, you know, all of the bulls**t of like, 'Oh, she got it is because it's a good story, not because she deserves it.'"
Ferrera said there were people she knew that were making her feel these inadequacies.
"There were people in my life perpetuating those narratives and making me feel like I hadn't earned this moment," she said. "When I look back at that time, my heart aches for that 22-year-old girl, who didn't get to really enjoy those moments."
The actress shared that during the time after the massive success of Ugly Betty, she experienced a lot of drama in her personal life.
"First of all, I loved this character, I loved this world," she stressed of the show, which ended in 2010 after four seasons. "I loved my cast. To have the feeling that this character, this story, is so needed in the culture right now. I just have a gut instinct that it's going to speak so strongly to so many people, myself included. ... I loved every minute of being Betty."
"The hoopla and the whirlwind that happened around it was challenging and exhausting and my whole life changed," she continued. "It wasn't really being famous, it was what it did for my personal relationships, what it did to my familial relationships."
Ferrera shared that she also had doubts at the time about her relationship with her now husband, Ryan Piers Williams.
"At the time we'd been together one year and then, boom, everything changed, so that was crazy,'" she explained. "It's like, this guy that I really like, but I don't see him for three days on end and he's working. Is this gonna survive this?"
Of course, these days, the two are happily married after tying the knot in 2011. They recently welcomed their second child together, daughter Lucia, earlier this month.
ET spoke to Ferrera in September, when she talked about the possibility of reviving Ugly Betty and also gave us an update on Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 3. Watch the video below:
RELATED CONTENT:
